Butter and Pigtails
by Silvia Kundera
Summary: In which we have boys crushing and kicking, and it's just so cute I almost can't take it. (Harry/Draco)


Title:**Butter and Pigtails ** **  
**Author: Silvia Kundera  
Disclaimer: This story's author does not claim to own any of the characters, concepts, or ideas originating in J. K. Rowlings' Harry Potter novels. No copyright infringement intended. No harm intended. Material is offered to the public free of charge--not for profit. This piece of fiction is the sole property of the author and cannot be copied, sent, or reproduced without permission of the author.  
Rating: PG  
Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy  
*SLASH*

Author's Note: Thanks to the very kind notes people left me on my previously posted stories -- especially the response to _Legend_. I really appreciate it. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.  
-----------------------------

There was just something about the way Harry Potter buttered his toast in the morning that was absolutely the last straw.

"I just want to _kick_ him," Draco said, rather vindictively. Potter had three pieces, and he was slathering them with the yellow paste one by one. He gripped the edges much too tightly, shredding flour and wheat to dust the table below, and when he leaned forward to speak it would stick to the front of his robes. It always did.

"Do you want me to?" Crabbe replied, as if they just could and no one would stop them. Potter's Mudblood was watching, which he only knew because he was watching _them_, which was rather appalling and made Draco say, "yes".

"But you can't let on to Mc Gonagell that I said you should," Draco hastened, as Crabbe pushed himself up with both hands.

"Why would-" Crabbe's brows knotted together.

"Well, of _course_ you're going to be caught," Draco said, slow and with each syllable drawn out, and even that didn't help much. "You're kicking him at his house _table_. Everyone will see you."

Crabbe frowned. "I thought I'd make it look like an accident."

"An accident? Like _what_?"

Crabbe pondered this. Or, possibly, he was still a bit hungry.

Potter picked up his second piece of toast, sticky fingers fumbling with the knife. "I just want to _kick_ him," Draco muttered.

Crabbe's eyes refocused. "Do you want me to?"

* * *

There was something very satisfying about the thought of his foot connecting with some soft, vulnerable portion of Potter's body - despite the fact that this was unlikely, since he was all malnourished skin and bones anyway, with long gangly legs and arms.

Though the malnourished aspect would actually come in _handy_, as Potter would then, in theory, tend to bruise and shatter fairly easily. That was certainly a happy thought.

Draco decided to think long and hard about it, all day long.

* * *

"Draco keeps kicking me in my sleep," Harry said, shuffling into Potions with an odd limp to his step. He dropped his wand to the desk with a tap. "It's rather odd."

"Malfoy is _sneaking in_?" Ron squeaked within a whisper. "Slytherin, oh, oh this is bad Harry. They have our password, that means. They _must_."

Harry blinked. "I meant in my dreams."

"Oh," said Ron. He paused. "Do you think it's a spell?"

"A spell?"

"A kind of... kicking you in your sleep type spell."

"I don't think there are incantations for that sort of thing, " Hermione replied quite seriously.

"And he doesn't always kick me the same way, " Harry added.

Ron wrinkled his nose. "There are different ways?"

"Yes," Harry answered grimly.

Harry really sort of hated his life.

* * *

Draco took to lurking about mid-Quidditch practice, but since Harry was in the air - and awake - he figured his shins and various other battered body parts were safe. Still, it made him all twitchy.

"Why do you keep-" Harry finally began to ask. 

"I'm spying," Draco said, and arched an eyebrow.

Harry raised both of his own. "You're not doing a very good job of it."

"Sod off," Draco muttered, and started in for the dormitories, probably because it was raining.

* * *

There was something about the dreams that made Harry feel like he should be naked. They had the same sort of feel as when he would find himself pushing open the Common's door, and everyone was gathering for breakfast and he followed them out - only realizing three steps later that he had forgotten his trousers and robes and everything (except for socks) and people were pointing and laughing and he dropped his wand and colored himself purple.

They had that same sort of feel - though not with_in_ the dreams, but in the moments afterward. It carried on all throughout the morning, this tight clenching stomach feeling, and it was like the dreams were stained beside the scar, on the center of his forehead.

* * *

"You can just quit it, okay?" Harry said, catching Draco in the hallway with a rough prod of his books. "Because it's _weird_."

Goyle snickered. "Name finally gone to your head and around the bend, eh Potter?"

"Potter's lost it," another boy announced loudly.

Draco watched him with hooded eyes. There was only a flicker of dark where the lids met, but Harry just knew they were looking at him. He bent to press lightly on his right ankle, smoothing away a sudden sizzle in the bone, and then sprang up.

"Look, just _stop_ it," Harry hissed, and tried not to touch Draco's robe as he shouldered past, because that felt weird too.

Though Draco's house being what it was, maybe he was _supposed_ to feel all under-your-skin slithery.

* * *

The absolute very oddest thing was what Draco did in the dreams _after_ kicking him.

He helped Harry up.

* * *

Harry fell down a lot, which was beginning to border on utterly humiliating.

It was surprisingly distracting to have yet _another_ body flanking him at every turn, popping out around every corner. Surprisingly so, because it wasn't as if he didn't already have five or six. It came with the territory: Boy Who Lived; Savior Of The Human Race; Master Of The Universe; That Boy Over There Who's Kind Of Cute, Even Though He's Sitting With The Know-It-All.

But _Draco Malfoy_. 

It made for very poor hand and eye coordination.

* * *

"Malfoy's stalking you?" Seamus thumbed hair out of his eyes, and leaned further over the table to snag Harry's Divinations scroll. 

Harry's eyes narrowed, and snatched the parchment back. "Yes." 

"And this is, in any way, something new?"

Harry scowled. "_Yes_."

"It's not new, Harry."

Professor Trelawney received the tragic news that afternoon: Seamus would be, during the next month, both eaten by a griffin, which would chew on him for approximately nine days, and then regurgitated and fed to a house elf.

* * *

Hogwart's hallways were surprising tight, and the swell of students between classes pushed insistently at the walls, mashing groups of pupils together and mixing them like salad.

Draco decided, quite vehemently, that he _hated _salad.

Crabbe and Goyle might lumber along, yes, but it was better than the _dashing_, every which way, and squawking about secret _plans_ -- which weren't secret at all, because everyone could hear all _about_ them. And the exploding candies and alarming smattering of freckles everywhere he directed himself, which were always getting in the way of things he wasn't particularly wanting to _look_ at, no, but more like keep an eye on. He only trusted Potter as far as he could levitate him, and Draco had always had been much more successful with potions than charms.

Salad was a simply _dreadful_ thing. He wondered if his father could ban lettuce.

_A war against produce_, Draco thought, _takes no prisoners_, and when he was bumped once more, beside the north tower, he kicked Harry Potter quite hard in the shin.

In a sort of slow motion, delayed reaction bend, Harry's mouth dropped wide and round, his chest twitching as he clapped a hand to it. "Ow!" He hadn't actually been kicked in the chest, not even in its general vicinity, and that made Draco want to kick him again.

"Mr. _Malfoy_!" Madame Hooch strode through a pack of first years, thick boots stomping purposely across the floor.

"I tripped," Draco declared. He hobbled towards her, for emphasis.

"He did _not_!"

"I'm actually in a lot of pain," Draco continued earnestly. "There's a wet patch beside this classroom door, and my knee appears to have given way. Potter has very knobby shins, actually, and I think it may have jarred a bone."

Hooch let out a slight cough and inquired, with a tinge of bemusement, "Do you think you'll be needing to see Madame Pomfrey?"

"Yes, I believe I will," Draco said, quite gravely. "And perhaps Harry," he displayed a sickeningly sweet smile, "should as well, since I _accidentally_ seem to have injured him."

"I'm _fine_," Harry said, shaking off the teacher's concerned prodding.

Draco grinned sharply, and cocked his head. "Then what were you yelling about?"

"You-"

"_Honestly_, Potter. Such a martyr complex."

Harry Potter took a good look at Madame Hooch, said a wistful goodbye to twenty house points, and kicked Draco Malfoy, sharp and quick, at the bone of his ankle.

* * *

"It was _worth it_," Harry grunted savagely.

He marched through the dormitory entrance, littering his path with leaves and clumps of roots, smeared upon the wood from his shoes and sliding off his shoulders and down his arms. Snape had sent him to gather a base ingredient for Deflating Draught from a glade in the Forbidden Forest, which _just so happened_ to be very near the happy home of Hagrid's spiders. 

Harry was still panting in search of his breath, swollen and purple knuckled fingers fumbling with his cupboard, in desperate pursuit of pajamas. He was very content -- overjoyed, in fact.

"I'm sure it was," remarked Hermione, and returned to her Arithmancy homework.

* * *

Draco was explaining, very carefully and in a well-organized, numbered and categorized fashion, why Harry Potter should never be allowed to breakfast at the same hour as him ever again, but his father didn't appear to be listening. 

It was _important_, because sometimes Potter wouldn't even _brush off_ his robes, and the leftover toast would just be sticking there, and Draco would _see it_, and it made his hands all twitchy.

"And Saint _Potter_, he's too pure for a bath, apparently, and carries on all day just like that, with _crumbs_-" 

"Crumbs?" said his father, rather darkly, and Draco was very glad that the situation was finally receiving that attention it deserved.

"_Yes_, on his Quidditch robes, even, and probably on his special _broom_."

"I believe," his father murmured, drawing himself up tall and thin, chin pointing sharply downward, "that it would be best for all involved if you simply _ignore_ Mr. Potter."

"But I _can't_," said Draco desperately.

"Well," There was a pregnant pause, and his father's eyes felt heavy upon him before turning to track the movements of his mother. "You will have to try."

* * *

"I _can't_," Draco informed Harry, and Harry said --

"Um, what?" 

-- and continued to eat his _toast_, until Draco turned it into a small field mouse, which scurried under the table, between their legs, and clearly somewhere very close to Lavendar Brown, for she let out a loud whoop and her shoes clattered upon the bench.

Draco had tried very hard for exactly thirteen days, rising early to eat with Marcus, who practiced before first class behind the garden hedges, spinning in tight circles and thwapping a Quaffle between the two eastern pillars. If he ate breakfast late, he ate it with both eyes fixed firmly on his lap, jaw working hurriedly.

He had tried terribly hard, but then wonderful, _witty_ Potter was speaking extra loud in Potions, and he had the _nerve_ to be up just as early Draco was the very next day, and sat all alone at the Gryffindor table, with his mussed hair piled in twisted layers onto of his head and his _scar_ sticking out pointedly for everyone to gawk at and admire, and Draco _so_ wanted to kick him. It was nearly a physical ache.

"Just," Draco flailed for a bit, and ran a hand messily through his hair. It was quite unlike him. "Stop."

"Stop what?"

"Stop being so. so _you_," insisted Draco, finally, tried not to think about it. He thought, instead --

"You kick me again, and I _swear_," Harry said.

"You swear _what_?" Draco replied testily.

Tightening the set of his jaw, Harry Potter pulled himself to half-standing, in that way that heroes always seemed to do, with one foot poised on the bench. "Something very bad will happen to you."

"Something bad has _already_ happened to me, Potter," Draco informed him, and thought about bread and knives and Potter's warm fingers. They bumped against his.

Somehow Potter's fingers and his fingers were stuck together.

"Oh," Harry said, and his foot was a little less poised, and a bit more wobbly.

"Yeah," Draco muttered, and blushed.

- end -  
[ yes, really. I don't do sequels.]


End file.
